the militants decided to try and break through to her new guinea apple screaming brain a. little with a slogan below him will run his back and it will. a little and it was all over all of us. we know that our comrades on our commander won't leave us no matter how tough it gets we're a team. they're going to move getting was a senior in his military trio. you know he knew that if he didn't smother that grenade with his body more if comrades would die he gave his own life to save us friends. by the time the vietnam war ended. the image of the united states military and american society was that the military was rather bumbling incompetent in

effect as an institution and the officer corps in the couple of decades following the vietnam war was absolutely committed to. changing that image and restoring the reputation of the american military in the eyes of the american people. get really stuck in you know like who cares about the war. this whole or. to a great degree that effort achieved success by the time of operation desert storm in early one thousand nine hundred many commentators had expected the war against iraq to be a long drawn out bloody some people said another vietnam this was a great triumph in the eyes of the officer corps a triumph not simply that. kuwait had been liberated a great triumph in the reputation carried over from vietnam days was seemingly

buried once and for all. the one blemish on operation desert storm. was that. a substantial proportion. of the small number of u.s. casualties suffered occurred as a consequence of friendly fire that's the fundamental lesson of vietnam for much of the military at the time we're talking about and so they were determined to maintain public support to show a new face to show success to show the recall the talk about smart the precipitation and training and professionalization of their force and they were determined to control the facts that fed that story line by any military standard gulf war one was a stunning victory by u.s. and coalition forces in the midst of such overwhelming success however reporters at the pentagon began to hear rumors about friendly fire washington post pentagon

correspondent barton gellman was the first journalist to thoroughly cover rumors about friendly fire so it took about six months after the war for us to find enough people find the data piece together enough information from public records and the spaces inside them that we could do the story and the story was stunning frankly. the army and marines agreed and the army up held it to the letter that they would tell no family. about a friendly fire casualty and until they could tell all of them in a synchronized matter that was intended to set up a press conference the next day so it was decreed that always twelve five pm would be the time that thirty five casualty officers would show up on the doorsteps of thirty five next of kin and tell them that their loved ones had been killed by american forces and no one was to be told before that even if there was categorical

evidence months before as there as there was in many cases. the army held a formal press conference on aug twelfth at five pm announcing that thirty five of the one hundred forty eight american servicemen and women who died on the battlefield in the gulf war were killed and it vertically by their comrades for many families like the family of captain lance fielder the army's public relations strategy left them disconcerted douglas fielder everyone called him lance he was a combat engineer. the basic facts are that his truck broke down he was waiting for repair another unit from across a boundary which was a little bit lost on the map stumbled across and thought that he and his guys were axes and kill the lieutenant perley and john daly understood at the scene as soon as he got out of his bradley fighting vehicle that he had ordered his gunner to open fire and that the casualties were americans he'd only knew it was friendly fire he did it. and yet the casualty officers went back and they reported to the

family that their head son had died in an encounter with a republican guard it was just made up out of whole cloth. it was only when they got back to saudi arabia that the soldiers had access to phones and field as best friends of the unit called the family and told them what really happened to. the two soldiers the list of guys who called fielder's family told their unit commander. low ranking officer and they wouldn't say who it was they were afraid of getting in trouble as a lieutenant or a cow to. what they told the family and he told them to shut up that if they said anything more they'd be court martialled. and that this was way above their pay grade and they'd better not do it again despite the family's six month campaign for information about the circumstances surrounding lance's death the army refused to confirm whether fielder had been killed by friendly fire until the joint

notifications on aug twelfth at five pm the army had a clear directive explicit regulation six hundred something that said that the families shall be notified promptly in any case and which has determined that the soldier died in friendly fire and the three star general who was in charge of personnel for the army unit to our interview with me said that he is obliged to follow regulations but he's also obliged to deviate from them when he feels he has a good reason which is the usual understanding of regulations. keep flat out admitted that he had broken the rules. within six months of the end of combat operations the army had clear evidence that friendly fire was involved in every one of the thirty five incidents and yet they failed to follow explicitly defined army regulations to notify families when defense secretary dick cheney appear before

a. senate panel he acknowledged that the families had to wait months for information about the deaths of their loved ones but defended the delays stating that it takes a few months to get a full and complete accounting is just a normal natural part of the process. and even within the officer corps people began to say how could this be this is unacceptable. and senior members of the officer corps. embarked upon a major project. the declared purpose of which was to ensure that in future conflicts there would be no fratricide as it was as it was called. and i think that. in essence in declaring friendly fire casualties to be unacceptable despite the fact that they have been commonplace throughout all of military history. the military itself therefore set the bar that much higher in terms of what the public would expect. from that

point forward due to issues in the handling of friendly fire cases during the gulf war the army completely revised regulations regarding the casualty reporting a friendly fire regulations now require that families be informed and accurate and timely manner when friendly fire is suspected further the army must notify families within days of an investigation into a suspected friendly fire incident i think the phenomenon of friendly fire probably extends back to the invention of gunpowder war is probably the most complex and difficult to. search world war two. we've invented a lot of technological means to assist us in overcoming that fog of war. but even so it doesn't it's still haven't gotten to honor percent even the best

command even the best soldier. going to make mistakes the deadliest occurrence in u.s. military history is believed to be an incident during operation cobra in world war two when allied bombing raids missed enemy targets and killed over five hundred soldiers in a single day. when army regulation shifted and required that families be informed of friendly fire casualties the attitude toward friendly fire incidents also transformed in the new era of public disclosure friendly fire incidents were cast as criminal and accompanied by a campaign to demonize the responsible parties or even court martial during gulf war one an incident involving nineteen year u.s. army veteran lieutenant colonel ralph alles became the first high profile case resulting from the change in friendly fire policy. on the night of february sixteenth one thousand nine hundred one hales took command of his apache helicopter

to check on two iraqi vehicles believed to be a mile north of the american line. the flying conditions that night were less than optimal it was dark and there was a sandstorm growing. concerned about his true position on the battlefield nails ask for clarification. why do i want to bet that they could go like that and their bread and. butter could everybody be right so the guy had a mouth although hales identified what he believed were iraqi vehicles he became concerned when his apaches fire control computer contradicted the grid coordinates provided by the troops on the ground relying on his battlefield instincts and commanding officers directions males prepared to fire on the vehicles. they it's hard to pull the trigger back me up a little bit here tell me i'm fired head and you're up seven zero thirty eight hundred meters. before firing hale's attempted to lock on the vehicle but since

they were friendly vehicles that failed to engage. the flight i. don't. know if it's up and going to hear it i want you to say that it was like a second one. i don't think a plea to the droid i'm going to forget what. ever such feel. like i'm going to like it because it's still a fact but at the chemical ready in the back which still. we did we get the organ. i did anything at around the vehicle there are no hard

and i've got you know we're going to walk away from the car and. roger you got good . i got to walk on the end of the. router i heard of that really afraid of that. fire fire fire. that right there i think roy but i don't want to have a. look at that i want. to be able to see the park they go ahead. and concentrate and. kill a bunch of people who don't know what their problem is they're really us people.

that night to us army soldiers were killed and six wounded today afterwards males was relieved of duty within a week reports of the event appeared in the press including unidentified sources within the pentagon to describe hales as a cowboy and as someone who was looking for a fight and several months later hills defended himself noting that the army abandoned me they sold me to the press to make themselves look good. washington so-called peace process to resolve the israel palestine conflict has produced little if any results in fact the palestinians are experiencing excel in way to the legal and seizures is it time to accept a one state solution and or look to global institutions like the un to replace the current negotiating framework.

they look like bounty islands where the locals can enjoy. the ocean. people are suffering the consequences. how much more poison lies on the ground. behind this zone there is what we call the bank on which there is a deposit of plutonium left by security test which caused the dispersion of radio nuclides despite previous cleaning efforts there remains a deposit of a little less than two kilos of plutonium stuck in the rock and the coral reef about ten metres down. a never ending legacy. what defines a country's success. faceless figures of economic growth. and

standard of living. least be cool language. programs in documentaries in arabic. in the world talks specifically r.p. interviews interesting story to tell you. that. visit.

tens of thousands stage mass protests in ukraine's capital kiev the opposition hopes to force the president from power by government border security forces investigate claims of an attempted seizure of power. we stand with the people of ukraine with a whole. new. foreign politicians fanned the flames with statements of support for the demonstrations some even traveled to kiev to spur on anti-government. u.s. oil giant chevron resumes drilling there a village in romania furious caged in a bitter fight against the fracking site they say will destroy their livelihoods. if you know you love the indignantly you're in the world would you want it doesn't go to the dogs.